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daria42 writes "In a press conference this morning, Bill Gates said Microsoft plans to launch Internet-based complements to its core products, dubbed 'Windows Live' and 'Office Live'. Windows Live is a set of Internet-based personal services, such as e-mail, blogging and instant messaging. It will be primarily supported by advertising and be separate from the operating system itself. Office Live will come in both ad-based and subscription versions that augment MS' Office suite. The programs won't replace the paid software but instead seem aimed at diminishing Google's ad revenue. Windows Live already appears to have 'gone live' in a preview format on the web."

I'm going to bank that they don't hurt Google in the least bit. Google has a customizable portal that I tried using for a while as well. And honestly I ended up back at the original Google page (well truthfully I'm using the suggest version... I love that page).

When it comes to searching the web... I don't want a portal and I'm going to assume that most people don't care. Portal services I use Yahoo, but I never use Yahoo for searching I use Google. It's simple and clean which is what i want in a search engine.

Microsoft is likely to hurt Yahoo in the portal arena for me if they can match and surpass what Yahoo currently offers though.

Googles advantage with targeted adds is based around the high conversion rate when someone clicks on a Google add they are 2x as likely to buy something from that site as they are from yahoo. Thus people are willing to pay about 2x a much per click for Google adds vs any other type. Now if people really start using Microsoft's portal you might cut into MS's profit's but I don't expect that to be an issue. I use hotmail instead of gmail because I can't connect to gmail at work but I still use Google for s

But the GP does have a point. At the core of any search engine is, of course, a search box. That's why, I suspect, for many of us Google starts at the search box in Firefox, or as a bookmarklet on the bookmarks bar (works in any browser).Heck, on Linux you can go one step further and bind a key combo to pop-up a text box [sourceforge.net], then have a shell script use the text to launch Google in Firefox, or Beagle on your documents, or IM someone.

I'd say the "live" desktop is already here. Of course, integration is still a

Despite what you and almost every other/.er would love to think, MS isn't inherenty bad. They have just made more mistakes than others, but that can change. Did you ever stop to think that they might just want to do something right? That they might want to experiment with new technologies? That this is actually pretty cool? No? Didn't think so.

Microsoft has made so many mistakes at the past, that they've lost the trust of customers. To regain that trust, they need to make a number of correct decisions in a row. Keep in mind that even more people distrust Microsoft than complain about the quality of their software, so even if they stop making "mistakes," they still need to work to re-gain customer goodwill.

Naw, hell no! That's why Microsoft has to be defended every ten minutes by one of you Whack-moles poking your head out of the hole to chatter Microsoft-isn't-really-evil-and-get-that-Bill-Gate s-as-Borg-icon-outta-here-already and then disappear one hair's breadth ahead of the hammers. The day I have to go around trying to bash it into people's heads that Linux, Unix, BSD, Macintosh, OS X, BeOS, Novell, and Sun Microsystems don't deserve their Evil Overlord reputations, then we'll be

"That's right, you heard me. I said, on/., that I think Windows should peacefully and cooperatively coexist wit Linux/OS X/whatever. Proprietary alongside open as well. There is no absolute right here, onlyimprovement."IF that's what you really want then MS is your enemy. They don't want the same thing that you do. In fact they are spending millions of dollars trying to make sure you don't get what you want. They are bribing politicians to make sure you don't get what you want. They are rigging their produ

Sorry to bust your balloon but microsoft is fundamentally dedicated to a world where everyone pays a monthly subscription for microsoft products and there are no competitors and any potential competitors are locked out before they can even get started.

Fooled me once, shame on me- fooled me at least 15 to 20 times- well I guess I should assume you are trying to fool me on any future attempts. (convicted of stealing competitors products, well known tendency of breaking competitors products by tweaking the operating system, well known tendency to slow competitors products by tweaking the operating system or using illegal API's and still certifying product, bundling, giving away products for free until the competition is dead then never innovating, "embracing and extending" java, j++, the halloween memoes, "collaborating" on products with a competitor and then bringing out their own version using knowledge they picked up during the collaboration, etc. etc. etc.).

They are not just another large capitalist company. They are something unique and they want to lock that in forever. They bought or drove out of business every legitimate business that competed with them either legally or illegally (Stak/doublespace comes to mind- there are others).

Trust me, you don't know it but you really do want 4 to 5 solid OS's competing with many different products so that they keep each other honest.

I already said in another post that I want coexistence, not a monopoly on any side.

Unfortunately what you want doesn't matter at all.

What Microsoft wants is to kill all competitors by 'cutting off their oxygen supply'. BTW, every other IT company is seen as a competitor. This is ingrained in the corporate culture, and starts at the very top with Gates/Balmer. That is why no one trusts them, not because they love Linux and hate MS (or whatever), but because they hate the things Microsoft has done and wants to do.

My reaction, avid OSS user that I am, was basically "Wow. This is actually pretty cool - they've surprised me." I needn't point out that google has said publicly that they have no plans to in any way turn OO.org into a web-based product, so if anyone has an edge here it is clearly the people who just released a beta of their web-based office suite...

Google themselves don't have any plans because they don't have an office suite... but they just invested a ton of money into the open source community...... and if Microsoft's "live" beta does well... you'll see clones... open source clones, and if it is good enough, Google might do it... (but who knows, "copycatting" doesn't seem to be their style just yet, they've got a lot of creativity left in them)

===

From the POV I think Google is looking from...

It's a lot easier not to look like a bad guy when you are letting other people do your work for you, I think... Google's got a good edge on that... the open source community is large and just needs money to help it along... it'll edge in on Microsoft's turf while being respectful towards Google for helping it originally.

They don't need to branch into these areas because they are basically paying other people to possibly do it for them... putting them in a better position to indirectly influence that part of the market...

All that this says is, "All of these years, the reason that I've hated MS is because they were successful. All of that bitching and moaning was because MS made money. I have never had anything objective to say about Microsoft. It's all been lies."

Seriosuly. What did Google do? All that anyone has accused them of is 1) Stealing all of the talent in software (damn, people want to work there, sounds evil) and 2) Raising the prices of software engineers (shit, and now I make more money).

News flash, the only people who complain about Google are the evil corporate masters that you're also supposedly railing against. Really. If their company was all that good, people would want to work their anyway. Amazon.com is not having any problems hiring talented people. Trust me. I've met some of their people.

What you're saying is that nobody can succeed and not be evil. I disbelieve that. I believe that honest people can make an honest living and still, at the end of the day, be honest. Call me old fashioned like that, but believe it or not, one day I'd like to be successful too. Also, I'd appreciate it if you don't call me a tyrant when I am.

News flash, the only people who complain about Google are the evil corporate masters that you're also supposedly railing against.

I bitch about Google enough as a user, and I suspect I'm not alone. You see, I don't use WinXP. They have a couple of really good apps that I'd love to see ported to open platforms, Picassa and Google Earth being two worth mentioning.

It's all well and good to say that Google's pro-open source, but when they fail to actually deliver the cool apps to an open platform, what

As an aside not I am a capitalist and I support the work that google is doing...but lets get real on the honest living....no one making a billion dollars while people are starving is making an honest living. If you believe otherwise you should have a long hard look at yourself tommorrow in the Mirror.

And if you think that throwing money at a problem solves it, you're a fool.

It really depends on what the problem is and where you throw the money and how much money you throw. Try solving problems without throwing money, or some sort of economic resource, at it. Not many that can be done for free. Even your investment in time translates to throwing money at the problem.

Intelligence is how you fix problems. Money is the tool that lets you leverage that intelligence to fix problems. Just thinking wisely at the problem rarely works.

Microsoft is getting really desperate. They are downright paranoid about us slashdotters, as well they should be. Firefox support (I hope soon) probably means Linux support (interesting... an alternative to WINE, or just useless?) means that they are really panicy about the google situation.

Also, is it just me, or does firefox do the same thing IE does there? Tried both, and it looks the same, with just the little Firefox users... banner at the top.

Remember when Microsoft was going to do this last time? Supposedly Office was going to be sold to users on an ASP (as in Application Service Provider) basis. You'd pay your monthly fee and you'd get to keep running your software. The market didn't care so much for this extortion^W business plan, and Microsoft decided to move to their "forced upgrade" cycles.BTW, if anyone is interested, you're not missing anything on live.com. I just went there in IE and it immediately tried to install a bunch of spyware cr

Yeah, I checked the page with OmniWeb, and I got the same thing. Not that I'd ever, ever use the product, but I still want to know what they're doing... Even more amusing to me is the fact that they went to the trouble of adding an XHTML DOCTYPE, but it fails validation miserably [w3.org].

Somehow, I have a feeling that Office Live might turn out to be more useful (and practical) than Windows Live. I mean, isn't the whole point of the World Wide Web that your computer's operating system doesn't matter? What featu

Slashdot built in! Also it seems to take better use of my screen space, more customisation is possible, it has MY weather - not weather from 50 miles away from me, I use Hotmail more than Gmail (due to pain of updating), and actually easier and nicer to use, IMO

Live555 [live555.com] use to have live.com. They make various bits of streaming media software. They have a library that's used in compiling MPlayer [mplayerhq.hu] with stream playing support. I wondered why they changed. I thought it was some silly bit of corporate branding, but I guess MS made them an offer they couldn't refuse.

Only the blue screens. The "accessing A:" and "Cannot find CD named HomeConstruction" feel all too familiar. Not to mention, "Cannot delete because the file is in use." Or the 500+ popups for the same thing. (There's a bug in explorer where you can manage to cause more than one delete confirm box to show up when using the Shift+Delete combination. The first one works, and the rest error out when you try to delete.) Plus I think the whole "

They could have had these products in the works for quite some time, though it seems a safe bet that this is in response to the recent Google rumours. Who cares, though? Reacting to the needs of the market is what smart businesses do. Microsoft seems to be going through a stage of re-inventing themselves somewhat. Becoming leaner and quickly responding to the market is what they need to do to survive. Good on them.

Yeah, it must be related to Google's announcement regarding Open Office. I mean, Microsoft can develop and release Windows Live and Office Live in the matter of 48 hours. Yeah, they're amazing alright.

Your criticism doesn't make any sense. If a beta is a full product, that's good isn't it? If no showstoppers are found you'd expect it to quickly become a release candidate and then soon after that to be released. That sounds like a pretty good use of the beta cycle to me. So in what way has Microsoft not been honest in their use of the term "beta"?

You are missing the point. That may be because I was not clear enough.So I will detail my feelings in a story for you.

Once upon a time there was MS-DOS. It was alright. It got the job done.

Then there was a program called Windows, let us say, Windows 3.0. It was buggy and problematic.

Then an upgrade came out to what was, in my opinion, only beta quality software (that was released as a final release)... and you had to pay for that... and it would upgrade you to a more stable beta quality product... and so o

The market has repeatedly shown that there is no interest in the concept of remote software or slimmed down computers. People really do like their personal computers. I had thought Microsoft understood this well, though it looks as if I've now been proven wrong. Are customers asking for this?

No. And, I don't think, as I'm sure will be said here, that it has anything at all to do with Google. It has to do with Microsoft wanting to figure out a way to develop an bottomless income stream. For example, many people where quite happy with Windows 95 untill they where forced to upgrade. Many people saw no particular reason to migrate from Windows 2000, untill they where forced. Many companies have built very expensive internal server applications around NT and Windows 2000 Server, but soon, they will be forced to upgrade. Over many of these platforms, people have stuck with Office 95 or Office 2000, because they sill functioned on the platforms and did what the users needed, not reason to upgrade. Microsoft sees revenue here, basically locking users into forced upgrades because once you buy into Subscription Office, you have to keep paying like a junkie if you want to access your documents.

HTML & server side scripting are another form of "dumb terminal",Hands up if you use a remote X session to a server for something, ditto VNC or NX

AND suns sunray thin client workstations are works of F***ing art damn it, they can pull more central server based tricks with those than any company buying them could ever want id. there are people that want these kinds of machines because it IS cheaper for them. If you are working on a number of platforms simultaneously with a number of groups/projects, its simpler to deal with one central server (real or virtual) for each reasonably sized team and platform they need and give them all their necessary enviroments. When the projects over theres only one machine to wipe and reinstall, not 10 or 20. They arent for everyone but they arent the rejected has beens you make them out to be.

Above all. the remote software pardigim is becoming more useful to the end users only now, while there has always been a set of proffessionals and technical types making use of it in various forms. Its only now with the explosion of the (god i hate using this term like this) Web 2.0 revoloution, that they have become aware that they dont have to be stuck on their computer all the time. They dont want to be. they want to be able to show someoen their stuff when theyre vistiting a freinds place, they want to be able to do stuff at work, or on vacation they did at home without the hassle. They want "their stuff" to be more available to them than ever. MS is tapping this in a big way now.

I just hope it kicks google to counter it, and revamp their now becoming stale personalised google.com/ig page design.

Minimalism like google is only one way to get a great UI,and MS seem to have gotten a good one to counter it subtly.

Windows Live is a painfully bad rip off of Google's Personal Homepage [google.com]. It all just Microsoft up to their old tricks: copy someone elses idea then try to extend it.

This time, however, the deck is stacked against them. Developers are leaving Microsoft and going to Google in hopes to make millions like early Microsoft employees did. Also Microsoft is stuck using their own software as a development platform which is not as flexible as Google or even Apple to make changes. Google can simply outcode Microsoft

It will be interesting to see if they can pull this off.I'm pretty sure the folks over at Google are laughing and yelling a big collective, "Nigg@#$ Pleeeeeeeeze!"

MicroSoft is choosing to compete in territory where it tends to do badly. E.g. Hotmail is 3rd, compared to Yahoo! or Google. MicroSoft isn't a service organization -- they don't do continuous uptime, no bugs, rapid releases well.

I'm sure Google is happy MicroSoft is trying to do this; they'll hemorrage money and generally be feeling like they are

Windows Live is a painfully bad rip off of Google's Personal Homepage [google.com].

I hope you're kidding. It seems, more and more, that there are the deluded who believe that Google, along with Apple, are responsible for everything.

This is nothing more than a rehash of portals [yafla.com], such that we saw in the late 90s. Excite was one of the biggest and most configurable portals, and of course many of us configured it, setting up our stocks and our weather, and then never used it again.

Developers are leaving Microsoft and going to Google in hopes to make millions like early Microsoft employees did.

It's a bit late for that at Google now: It's too big of a company for that get-rich-quick type nonsense. However it is true that a lot of ex-Microsofters have left to join small startups, or to create one themselves. This is especially true too now that Microsoft is becoming just like every other traditional "where careers go to die" organization.

Also Microsoft is stuck using their own software as a development platform

Nonsense. Microsoft's development platform is extraordinarily powerful, and it certainly isn't a detriment that they use it.

The problem that Microsoft's internet ventures have, and it's always been this way, is that they do the absolute minimum amount possible to ensure that they aren't eviscerated, but no more. If you remember, the IE team smoked Netscape, and then they were promptly disbanded. Why? Because that team and group represented a threat to the Microsoft cash cows - Office and Windows. These "web versions" of Office and Windows are almost laughable - if anything they'll complement, and most certainly they won't replace until Microsoft is on its deathbed and the revenue has completely dried up.

My sentiments exactly except I don't think they even tried to extend it. It's a somewhat anemic version of the Google Personal Homepage with nary a hope of ever catching up. I am confounded by the "Windows Live" aspect, but in fairness it is in Beta. Perhaps an Internet based bootable OS is right around the corner. From Microsoft I mean. BWAHAHAHAHHAHAAAAHAHAHHAHAH!!!!In seriousness, once Jobs gets the brains to partner up with Google, MS is going to be a distant memory (not that this scenario is neces

My sentiments exactly except I don't think they even tried to extend it. It's a somewhat anemic version of the Google Personal Homepage with nary a hope of ever catching up. I am confounded by the "Windows Live" aspect, but in fairness it is in Beta. Perhaps an Internet based bootable OS is right around the corner. From Microsoft I mean. BWAHAHAHAHHAHAAAAHAHAHHAHAH!!!!

Have you even tried using Live.com? Sure, it's superficially like Google's personalized home page, but it does more than that. First of

Painfully bad? I think that's a bit strong. I do use Google's Personal Homepage, and the live.com page seems remarkably similar - editable drag and drop content sections, options for adding other or custom content. It has support for 5 languages including 3 variants of English (UK, US and Australian), and interestingly, they are quite mature about what suggested content they offer up - eg. Google News, FLickr. Two of their biggest competitors and they're prepared to send traffic their way.Painfully bad? Wel

I hope they don't plan on using ajax or java script to do it. The IE java script interpreter is so damn slow it is like watching paint dry. I just tried to build a large scale app using a java script interface kit and failed. It failed not because the program was bad, as a matter of fact it was damn snappy in firefox. Then I did the unthinkable and loaded it up in IE, slow as mud to the point of being totally unusable. The next person that tells me how great IE is, I am going to punch in the teeth.

I saw some HTML + webified versions of Office when I worked there. Probably around 2000. They cancelled it. I wish I could remember more about it.

Most likely you're thinking about NetDocs [eweek.com], which, though it never shipped as a single product, did actually contribute many pieces to Office (InfoPath in particular), MSN (parts of their billing and support system, Messenger, pieces of MSN Explorer), and other Microsoft products that did ship. Alternatively, you might have seen pieces of Hailstorm [coverpages.org], which was

"This advertising model has emerged as a very important thing," Gates said.

Translation: "We really missed the boat on that one, and are desperately trying to catch up."

"The live phenomenon is not just about Microsoft. It's partners, it's competitors...the whole space is being transformed."

Translation: "I woke up one day and suddenly there was this technology company making alot of money... and to my surprise it wasn't Microsoft! I knew I had to take over that tech sector ASAP so I asked someone what all this 'online' stuff was about."

Microsoft is in the position IBM was years ago and they are just beginning to realize the effect of Google and it seems a bit too late now......a lot of Microsoft's current offerings aren't all that appealing or innovative compared to Googles and other companies.

This seems like it could be the beginning of everything moving to a more web-oriented computer experience. Who needs Windows when you can use Office, MSN, etc. FROM FIREFOX (under Linux). Windows could be left for professionals who need a robust platform to run "real" applications for things like video/image editing, CAD design, etc. Everyday users could do the most basic computer tasks in the same way under Linux as under Windows...
I guess even if this kills Windows, Microsoft has a stake in it either way now...

It seems like this page was thrown togethor pretty quickly. According to a job posting I saw on craigslist this afternoon, MS is looking for Systems Admins/Engineers for Windows Live (with command line experience). The DNS was updated yesterday, the registrar (register.com) still has the owner being some guy named Jack Spurr and not Microsoft. I guess these are two reasons why it's "beta".

Windows users would sign up for droves for something like Apple's.Mac [apple.com], this would have been a great way for Microsoft to get more revenue stream, offer backup services, personal home pages, file exchange, groups, and what not. Sure, Windows is crappy enough already, but a service like that, for Windows would have been a great thing. I'm sure Google will introduce it soon enough anyway.

Instead, they're in full reaction mode to Google with this really crappy site that seem

Back in the day when Microsoft were too stubborn/clueless/scared-shitless of thin-client computing, they did everything they could to kill the whole idea of network computing. They would hear nothing about how software would be delivered to lightweight machines over the network.

When Sun was saying "The Network Is The Computer", Micosoft was busily saying "Network? What Network? There's no network -- Hey, look, Clippy!".

And, now that they're trotting out what is, oh, what, a 10 or 15 year old idea, they're going to spin this and say they've innovated, and look at what they came up with.

The simple fact (IMO) is that Microsoft couldn't innovate the shit into a diaper. They rehash ideas other people have done, make incompatible implementations, and bray really loudly about how they're giving the consumer what they want.

It's only because Google is lining up to completely eat Microsoft's lunch in the area of web-delievered technologies that they're even beginning to look at this market segment. The difference being, Google implements it, releases it (and free SDKs for it), and then moves on to making other stuff. [ Witness an earlier story about a Carmen San Diego-esque game based on Google maps, Google pedometers, and god knows what else I've missed ]

As has been pointed out by smarter people than I, Google is leaving the actual technology in their wake. Microsoft is leaving press-releases and open-ended promises about what they might deliver in the future.

I think its real but it is in desperation..MS Office makes up a large amount of MS's income with the recent resignation of Offices key executive and just a day after google goes public about contributing actual paid employees into open office it does make you wonder...

This whole www.live.com thing looks nice but two things i dont get is a) the slashdot feed is there (linux users haven) and i saw the netscape logo there too b) its all beta beta beta, MS has a reputation of releasing stuff with a little more

Second, live.com is, as everyone else has been saying, another web portal (albeit with some interesting features and probably Windows integration). Nothing prevents anyone else from implementing all the same ideas.

If you're the first to make something, that makes you a monopoly by default. So should we punish all inventors?